Can I borrow a shilling for the meter, please?

Valleys Mam highlights an issue that many who are worried about fuel poverty have brought up over the past few months. The fact that people who obtain gas and electricity through prepayment meters are being ripped off.

Mam notes that

Companies could be making up to £550m a year from extra charges they charge on prepayment meters.

and that

These customers who pay by prepayment meter subsidise customers who can get the cheapest deals.

This is clearly wrong. The poorest customers, those least able to pay, shouldn't be giving profit boosts to the energy supply companies, and should absolutely not pay extra in order to subsidise "deals" offered to better off customers.

However I do have a serious concern about campaigns against prepayment meter charges. Prepayment is more expensive to collect than monthly direct debit or quarterly bill payment. If you charge your gas key in the village shop's PayPoint machine, then both the shopkeeper and PayPoint expect to be paid for offering the service. The customer who has the convenience of paying in this way should expect to pay the costs of that convenience. We mustn't forget that the being able to pay for utilities at £3, £5 or £10 a time IS convenient to most of those who use the service.

Some time ago (in the mid 1990's) the Water Boards offered a similar service to poorer customers. They could pay their Water charges in the dribs and drabs that they could afford using a charge card. It was a service that millions of poorer people subscribed to, voluntarily, because it made payment easier for them.

Unfortunately some Socialist do-gooders who could, no doubt, afford their own water rates, complained to the courts about the legality of the scheme, and it was withdrawn. The withdrawal of the scheme made many of those who were happy with the system unable to pay and plunged them into a debt that they couldn't afford.

In supporting any campaign to get costs down for prepayment customers, I do hope that the campaigners don't throw the baby out with the bath water (sorry for the pun) as they did with water prepayment. Losing the ability to prepay the energy bills a little at a time would be a disaster for most low income families.

Bird Flu and the Credit Crunch

As I have said before, I don't understand economics. The economics that I have some inkling of relate to the pound in my pocket, the price of bread & milk and hoping that the money doesn't end before the month does.

Cross fingers, touch wood etc, despite the headlines I don't think that the credit crunch has affected me yet. So why am I panicking like the rest of the herd?

This time last year I was worried that my family and I were going to be wiped out by avian flu. It was a crisis that was mentioned day in day out by every newspaper, TV and radio channel. We were doomed, all doomed; but me and mine survived, as did everybody else!

Isn't the current economic crisis just a repeat of last years news? The 24 hour news agencies HAVE to have a crisis to report in order to justify their existence.

Wouldn't pulling the plug on BBC News 24 and similar channels that peddle pessimism, doom and gloom every hour of the day be a cheaper option than nationalising the banks?

Don't Bail 'em Jail 'em

I rarely comment on economic issues because I don't understand them. I'm a poor lad bought up in a council house who knows the economic difference between answering the door to the rent collector with cash in hand and hiding behind the sofa and keeping dead quiet so that the monster thinks that there is nobody at home!

When people talk about $700,000,000,000 bail outs they are talking about something way beyond my imagination. I once had £1,000 in my wallet, it was nice and made my wallet feel juicy fat. But I can't imagine what 700 billion is - is it enough to fill a suitcase, a room, a palace?

Love her or hate her, one of Mrs T's most effective campaigns was when she illustrated her policies by showing what (she claimed) would be the difference between what would be in a shopping basket if one elected a Tory Government, in comparison to what would be in the same basket under Labour. Socialists might say that she lied through her teeth when making the illustration, but that's incidental - the image worked.

So why aren't politicians from either side, or the media explaining the credit crunch with shopping bag illustrations? Is it because the biggest problem isn't one that effects the type of person who uses a shopping bag, but a problem for the mega rich?

My great great uncle Danny was a red hot Rhondda Communist, who made a shopping bag illustration many years ago, which still makes me think, despite my hatred of socialism. Uncle Danny's comment was related to 1930's Wall Street Crash films:

If you drop a shilling on the pavement you are sad because you have lost a shilling. Somebody else goes past and finds that shilling and they are glad to be a shilling better off.

Likewise for every newsreal that shows a man jumping off a building because he lost a million dollars - there is another man supping champagne because he found that million dollars.

There seems to be some truth in Uncle Danny's illustration. The billions of dollars lost by the banking crisis seem to have been found by spivs and speculators. As the usually right wing Daily Express explains:

Greedy speculators were gambling millions of pounds that the Lloyds TSB deal to save HBOS, owner of the Halifax, was in danger of falling apart.

At one point, shares in HBOS were down by more than 20 per cent, but they recovered slightly to end 16p down at 126p.

As the global economic crisis has worsened, both banks’ share prices have fallen along with the value of the Lloyds offer for HBOS. This has prompted the spivs to gamble that Lloyds may have to reprice the deal.

The spivs moved in despite growing anger at the City’s excesses, where huge fortunes are being made by speculators on the back of reckless gambles

NOTE Huge Fortunes are being made from this crisis!

If people have made mega billions by spiving and speculating and creating this misery, should any government offer bail outs that result in normal taxpayers subsidising the mega profits that the spivs and speculators have made?

Shouldn't a Labour Government, of all governments, be going after these profiteers and saying we want our money back?

Or as posters spotted in BBC reports from Washington tonight said about the spivs and speculators Don't Bail 'em Jail 'em"